Posted on 06/20/2008 6:52:21 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to Associated Press, kills it with no retraction
The main headline was this: Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming
This drew a lot of attention because of the total lack of verifiable science associated with it. I posted some graphs of USGS data showing that the opposite was true, that recent earthquake energy was actually less that in the early 1900’s, and several commenters pointed out that the source of the story, a Dr. Tom Chalko, has some less than stellar associations with what I would describe as “new age” mysticism, such as Thiaoouba Prophecy and “reading your Aura”. He also writes a dandy piece entitled “Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE?” which is linked to a website he runs about “bioresonance” where you can buy a “bioresonant” shirt.
So with that sort of science background available on the web for anyone to see in a few seconds of searching, one wonders how CBS News was duped into running a story like this without even bothering to check into the author. This makes the “historic” Microsoft Word documents used by Dan Rather to discredit President Bush’s National Guard Service look like a peer reviewed science paper.
The story gets weirder. CBS attributed the story on their website to the Associated Press (AP) and you can see that clearly in the screen capture of the story [at link]. Odd thing though, there is no byline, no story author as you usually see with an AP story . . . .
After apparently learning of the less than scientific associations of the lead author of the research, CBS removed it from their website as of about 3 p.m. EST on June 19. This was the original link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/18/tech/main4191556.shtml
Here is where it gets interesting, after CBS pulled the story from their website, I did some searches for it on the Associated Press website at www.ap.org thinking it would still be there.
The story is not found in searches at www.ap.org using “Tom Chalko” or “earthquake global warming”
At the www.ap.org search, for earthquake(s) we find many stories either side of it on June 18th:
But nothing about the Chalko story. Putting in the authors name “Tom Chalko” also yields nothing on ap.org. I wasn’t content with that, so I asked my radio station newsroom at KPAY to run a search on the AP wire stories they receive; nothing turned up. I also asked the editor of our local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record, to run a search, and he also found no evidence that AP had transmitted this story.
A further point- it seems to be only connected to CBS News, and their attribution to the AP appears when I do Google News searches such as this one:
“earthquakes global warming Associated press” or “Tom Chalko AP” the only association that appears is the CBS story with (AP) in it, as shown in the screencap [at link].
Yeah, the good thing is there's NEVER been a crack-pot doctor...or even a biased one - they're all brilliant.
sarcasm/off (Ummmm, I fear there's too many doctors in my family for me to be easily impressed by the title)
How do I know this?
I’ve been working in TV news for almost 30 years.
I see.
He’s probably a chiropractor. They can use the title Dr. if they pass all the T-F exams.
If that does happen I hope Jim lets us know.
I will gladly pay any and all fees associated with this story. And then I am going to point it out every time some idiot liberal tries to tell me how the MSM is accurate and unbiased!
Perhaps a lawyer will chance along and tell us.
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